SNIADACH
v.
FAMILY
FINANCE CORP. OF BAY VIEW ET AL.
395
U.S. 337 (1969)
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN.
No. 130.
Argued April 21, 1969.
Decided June 9, 1969.
Under Wisconsin's garnishment procedure the clerk of
the court issues a summons at the request of the creditor's lawyer, and the
latter, by serving the garnishee (here the employer) sets in motion the
machinery whereby wages (here one-half those due the employee) are frozen. The
creditor has 10 days in which to serve the summons and complaint on the debtor
after service on the garnishee, although here petitioner was served the same
day as the employer. The wages may be unfrozen if the wage earner wins on the
merits in the suit on the debt. Petitioner moved that the garnishment
proceedings be dismissed for failure to meet the Fourteenth Amendment's
procedural due process requirements, but the Wisconsin courts approved the
procedure. Held: Wisconsin's prejudgment garnishment of wages procedure, with
its obvious taking of property without notice and prior hearing, violates the
fundamental principles of procedural due process. Pp. 339-342.
37 Wis. 2d 163, 154 N. W. 2d 259, reversed.
Jack Greenberg argued the cause for petitioner. With
him on the brief were James M. Nabrit III, Thomas M. Jacobson, and William F.
Young, Jr.
Sheldon D. Frank argued the cause and filed a brief
for respondents.
Rhoda H. Karpatkin and Marvin M. Karpatkin filed a brief
for the Consumers Union of United States, Inc., as amicus curiae urging
reversal.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the
Court.
Respondents instituted a garnishment action against
petitioner as defendant and Miller Harris Instrument Co., her employer, as
garnishee. The complaint alleged [395 U.S. 337, 338] a
claim of $420 on a promissory note. The garnishee filed its answer stating it
had wages of $63.18 under its control earned by petitioner and unpaid, and that
it would pay one-half to petitioner as a subsistence allowance 1 and
hold the other half subject to the order of the court.
Petitioner moved that the garnishment proceedings be
dismissed for failure to satisfy the due process requirements of the Fourteenth
Amendment. The Wisconsin Supreme Court sustained the lower state court in
approving the procedure. 37 Wis. 2d 163, 154 N. W. 2d 259. The case is here on
a petition for a writ of certiorari. 393
U.S. 1078 .
The Wisconsin statute gives a plaintiff 10 days in
which to serve the summons and complaint on the defendant after service on the
garnishee. 2 In this case petitioner was served the same day
as the garnishee. She nonetheless claims that the Wisconsin garnishment
procedure violates that due process required by the Fourteenth Amendment, in
that notice and an opportunity to be heard are not given before the in rem
seizure of the wages. What happens in Wisconsin is that the clerk of the court
issues the summons at the request of the creditor's lawyer; and it is the
latter who by serving the garnishee sets in motion the machinery whereby the [395 U.S. 337, 339] wages are frozen. 3
They may, it is true, be unfrozen if the trial of the main suit is ever had
and the wage earner wins on the merits. But in the interim the wage earner is
deprived of his enjoyment of earned wages without any opportunity to be heard
and to tender any defense he may have, whether it be fraud or otherwise.
Such summary procedure may well meet the
requirements of due process in extraordinary situations. Cf. Fahey v. Mallonee,
332
U.S. 245, 253 -254; Ewing v. Mytinger & Casselberry, Inc., 339
U.S. 594, 598 -600; Ownbey v. Morgan, 256 U.S. 94,
110 -112; Coffin Bros. v. Bennett, 277 U.S. 29, 31
. But in the present case no situation requiring special protection to a
state or creditor interest is presented by the facts; nor is the Wisconsin
statute narrowly drawn to meet any such unusual condition. Petitioner was a
resident of this Wisconsin community and in personam jurisdiction was readily
obtainable.
The question is not whether the Wisconsin law is a
wise law or unwise law. Our concern is not what philosophy Wisconsin should or
should not embrace. See Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 233 .
We do not sit as a super-legislative body. In this case the sole question is
whether there has been a taking of property without that procedural due process
that is required by the Fourteenth Amendment. We have dealt over and over again
with the question of what constitutes "the right to be heard"
(Schroeder v. New York, 371
U.S. 208, 212 ) within the meaning of procedural due process. See Mullane
v. Central Hanover Trust Co., 339
U.S. 306, 314 . In the latter case we said that the right to be heard
"has little reality or worth unless one is informed that the matter is
pending and can choose for himself whether [395 U.S.
337, 340] to appear or default, acquiesce or contest." 339
U.S., at 314 . In the context of this case the question is whether the
interim freezing of the wages without a chance to be heard violates procedural
due process.
A procedural rule that may satisfy due process for
attachments in general, see McKay v. McInnes, 279 U.S. 820 ,
does not necessarily satisfy procedural due process in every case. The fact
that a procedure would pass muster under a feudal regime does not mean it gives
necessary protection to all property in its modern forms. We deal here with
wages - a specialized type of property presenting distinct problems in our
economic system. We turn then to the nature of that property and problems of
procedural due process.
A prejudgment garnishment of the Wisconsin type is a
taking which may impose tremendous hardship on wage earners with families to
support. Until a recent Act of Congress, 4 304 of which
forbids discharge of employees on the ground that their wages have been
garnished, garnishment often meant the loss of a job. Over and beyond that was
the great drain on family income. As stated by Congressman Reuss: 5
"The idea of wage
garnishment in advance of judgment, of trustee process, of wage attachment, or
whatever it is called is a most inhuman doctrine. It compels the wage earner,
trying to keep his family together, to be driven below the poverty level."
Recent investigations of the problem have disclosed
the grave injustices made possible by prejudgment garnishment whereby the sole
opportunity to be heard comes after the taking. Congressman Sullivan, Chairman
of [395 U.S. 337, 341] the House Subcommittee
on Consumer Affairs who held extensive hearings on this and related problems
stated:
"What we know from our
study of this problem is that in a vast number of cases the debt is a
fraudulent one, saddled on a poor ignorant person who is trapped in an easy credit
nightmare, in which he is charged double for something he could not pay for
even if the proper price was called for, and then hounded into giving up his
pound of flesh, and being fired besides." 114 Cong. Rec. 1832.
The leverage of the creditor on the wage earner is
enormous. The creditor tenders not only the original debt but the
"collection fees" incurred by his attorneys in the garnishment
proceedings:
"The debtor whose wages
are tied up by a writ of garnishment, and who is usually in need of money, is
in no position to resist demands for collection fees. If the debt is small, the
debtor will be under considerable pressure to pay the debt and collection
charges in order to get his wages back. If the debt is large, he will often
sign a new contract of `payment schedule' which incorporates these additional
charges." 6
Apart from those collateral consequences, it appears
that in Wisconsin the statutory exemption granted the wage earner 7
is "generally insufficient to support the debtor for any one
week." 8
The result is that a prejudgment garnishment of the
Wisconsin type may as a practical matter drive a wage-earning [395 U.S. 337, 342] family to the wall. 9
Where the taking of one's property is so obvious, it needs no extended
argument to conclude that absent notice and a prior hearing (cf. Coe v. Armour
Fertilizer Works, 237
U.S. 413, 423 ) this prejudgment garnishment procedure violates the
fundamental principles of due process.
Reversed.
Footnotes
[ Footnote 1 ] Wis. Stat. 267.18
(2) (a) provides:
"When wages or salary
are the subject of garnishment action, the garnishee shall pay over to the
principal defendant on the date when such wages or salary would normally be
payable a subsistence allowance, out of the wages or salary then owing, in the
sum of $25 in the case of an individual without dependents or $40 in the case
of an individual with dependents; but in no event in excess of 50 per cent of
the wages or salary owing. Said subsistence allowance shall be applied to the
first wages or salary earned in the period subject to said garnishment
action."
[ Footnote 2 ] Wis. Stat. 267.07
(1).
[ Footnote 3 ] Wis. Stat. 267.04
(1).
[ Footnote 4 ] 82 Stat. 146, Act
of May 29, 1968.
[ Footnote 5 ] 114 Cong. Rec.
1832.
[ Footnote 6 ] Comment, Wage
Garnishment in Washington - An Empirical Study, 43 Wash. L. Rev. 743, 753
(1968). And see Comment, Wage Garnishment as a Collection Device, 1967 Wis. L.
Rev. 759.
[ Footnote 7 ] See n. 1, supra.
[ Footnote 8 ] Comment, Wage
Garnishment as a Collection Device, 1967 Wis. L. Rev. 759, 767.
[ Footnote 9 ] "For a poor
man - and whoever heard of the wage of the affluent being attached? - to lose
part of his salary often means his family will go without the essentials. No
man sits by while his family goes hungry or without heat. He either files for
consumer bankruptcy and tries to begin again, or just quits his job and goes on
relief. Where is the equity, the common sense, in such a process?"
Congressman Gonzales, 114 Cong. Rec. 1833. For the impact of garnishment on
personal bankruptcies see H. R. Rep. No. 1040, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 20-21.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring.
Particularly in light of my Brother BLACK's dissent,
I think it not amiss for me to make explicit the precise basis on which I join
the Court's opinion. The "property" of which petitioner has been
deprived is the use of the garnished portion of her wages during the interim
period between the garnishment and the culmination of the main suit. Since this
deprivation cannot be characterized as de minimis, she must be accorded the
usual requisites of procedural due process: notice and a prior hearing.
The rejoinder which this statement of position has
drawn from my Brother BLACK prompts an additional word. His and my divergence
in this case rests, I think, upon a basic difference over whether the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits state action by norms of
"fundamental fairness" whose content in any given instance is to be
judicially derived not alone, as my colleague believes it should be, from the
specifics of the Constitution, but also, as I believe, from concepts [395 U.S. 337, 343] which are part of the
Anglo-American legal heritage - not, as my Brother BLACK continues to insist,
from the mere predilections of individual judges.
From my standpoint, I do not consider that the
requirements of "notice" and "hearing" are satisfied by the
fact that the petitioner was advised of the garnishment simultaneously with the
garnishee, or by the fact that she will not permanently lose the garnished
property until after a plenary adverse adjudication of the underlying claim
against her, or by the fact that relief from the garnishment may have been
available in the interim under less than clear circumstances. Compare the
majority and dissenting opinions in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, 37 Wis. 2d
163, 178, 154 N. W. 2d 259, 267 (1967). Apart from special situations, some of
which are referred to in this Court's opinion, see ante, at 339, I think that
due process is afforded only by the kinds of "notice" and
"hearing" which are aimed at establishing the validity, or at least
the probable validity, of the underlying claim against the alleged debtor
before he can be deprived of his property or its unrestricted use. I think this
is the thrust of the past cases in this Court. See, e. g., Mullane v. Central
Hanover Trust Co., 339
U.S. 306, 313 (1950); Opp Cotton Mills v. Administrator, 312
U.S. 126, 152 -153 (1941); United States v. Illinois Cent. R. Co., 291 U.S. 457,
463 (1934); Londoner v. City & County of Denver, 210 U.S. 373,
385 -386 (1908). * And I am [395
U.S. 337, 344] quite unwilling to take the unexplicated per curiam in
McKay v. McInnes, 279
U.S. 820 (1929), as vitiating or diluting these essential elements of due
process.
[ Footnote * ] There are other
decisions to the effect that one may be deprived of property by summary
administrative action taken before hearing when such action is essential to
protect a vital governmental interest. See, e. g., Ewing v. Mytinger &
Casselberry, Inc., 339
U.S. 594 (1950); Fahey v. Mallonee, 332
U.S. 245 (1947); Bowles v. Willingham, 321
U.S. 503 (1944); North Amer. Cold Storage Co. v. City of Chicago, 211 U.S. 306 (1908).
However, no such justification has been advanced in behalf of Wisconsin's
garnishment law.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting.
The Court here holds unconstitutional a Wisconsin
statute permitting garnishment before a judgment has been obtained against the
principal debtor. The law, however, requires that notice be given to the
principal debtor and authorizes him to present all of his legal defenses at the
regular hearing and trial of the case. The Wisconsin law is said to violate the
"fundamental principles of due process." Of course the Due Process
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment contains no words that indicate that this
Court has power to play so fast and loose with state laws. The arguments the
Court makes to reach what I consider to be its unconstitutional conclusion,
however, show why it strikes down this state law. It is because it considers a
garnishment law of this kind to be bad state policy, a judgment I think the
state legislature, not this Court, has power to make. The Court shows it
believes the garnishment policy to be a "`most inhuman doctrine'";
that it "`compels the wage earner, trying to keep his family together, to
be driven below the poverty level'"; that "`in a vast number of cases
the debt is a fraudulent one, saddled on a poor ignorant person who is trapped
in an easy credit nightmare, in which he is charged double for something he
could not pay for even if the proper price was called for, and then hounded
into giving up his pound of flesh, and being fired besides.'"
The foregoing emotional rhetoric might be very
appropriate for Congressmen to make against some phases of garnishment laws.
Indeed, the quoted statements were made by Congressmen during a debate over a
proposed [395 U.S. 337, 345] federal
garnishment law. The arguments would also be appropriate for Wisconsin's
legislators to make against that State's garnishment laws. But made in a Court
opinion, holding Wisconsin's law unconstitutional, they amount to what I
believe to be a plain, judicial usurpation of state legislative power to decide
what the State's laws shall be. There is not one word in our Federal
Constitution or in any of its Amendments and not a word in the reports of that
document's passage from which one can draw the slightest inference that we have
authority thus to try to supplement or strike down the State's selection of its
own policies. The Wisconsin law is simply nullified by this Court as though the
Court had been granted a super-legislative power to step in and frustrate
policies of States adopted by their own elected legislatures. The Court thus
steps back into the due process philosophy which brought on President
Roosevelt's Court fight. Arguments can be made for outlawing loan sharks and
installment sales companies but such decisions, I think, should be made by
state and federal legislators, and not by this Court.
This brings me to the short concurring opinion of my
Brother HARLAN, which makes "explicit the precise basis" on which he
joins the Court's opinion. That basis is:
"The `property' of
which petitioner has been deprived is the use of the garnished portion of her
wages during the interim period between the garnishment and the culmination of
the main suit. Since this deprivation cannot be characterized as de minimis,
she must be accorded the usual requisites of procedural due process: notice and
a prior hearing."
Every argument implicit in this summary statement of
my Brother HARLAN's views has been, in my judgment, satisfactorily answered in
the opinion of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in this case - an outstanding
opinion [395 U.S. 337, 346] on constitutional
law. 37 Wis. 2d 163, 154 N. W. 2d 259. That opinion shows that petitioner was
not required to wait until the "culmination of the main suit," that
is, the suit between the creditor and the petitioner. In fact the case now
before us was not a final determination of the merits of that controversy but
was, in accordance with well-established state court procedure, the result of a
motion made by the petitioner to dismiss the garnishment proceedings. With
reference to my Brother HARLAN's statement that petitioner's deprivation could
not be characterized as de minimis, it is pertinent to note that the
garnishment was served on her and her employer on the same day, November 21,
1966; that she, without waiting for a trial on the merits, filed a motion to
dismiss the garnishment on December 23, 1966, which motion was denied by the
Circuit Court on April 18, 1967; and that it is that judgment which is before
us today. The amount of her wages held up by the garnishment was $31.59. The
amount of interest on the wages withheld even if computed at 10% annually would
have been about $3. Whether that would be classified as de minimis I do not
know and in fact it is not material to know for the decision of this case.
In the motion to dismiss, petitioner, according to
the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, asserted a "number of grounds based on
injustices and deprivations which have been, or are likely to be, suffered by
others, but which she has not personally experienced." 37 Wis. 2d 163,
166, 154 N. W. 2d 259, 261. The court went further and pointed out that under
Wisconsin law the court would not strike down a law as unconstitutional on the
ground that some person other than the challenger of that law might in the
future be injured by its unconstitutional part. It would seem, therefore, that
the great number of our cases holding that we do not determine the
constitutionality [395 U.S. 337, 347] of state
statutes where the judgment on them was based on state law would prevent our
passing on this case at all.
The indebtedness of petitioner was evidenced by a
promissory note, but petitioner's affidavit in support of the motion to
dismiss, according to the Wisconsin Supreme Court contained no allegation that
she is not indebted thereon to the plaintiff. Of course if it had alleged that,
or if it had shown in some other way that this was not a good-faith lawsuit
against her, the Wisconsin opinion shows that this could have disposed of the
whole case on the summary motion.
Another ground of unconstitutionality, according to
the state court, was that the Act permitted a defendant to post a bond and
secure the release of garnished property and that this provision denied equal
protection of the law "to persons of low income." With reference to
this ground, the Wisconsin court said:
"Appellant has made no
showing that she is a person of low income and unable to post a bond." 37
Wis. 2d, at 167, 154 N. W. 2d, at 261.
Another ground of unconstitutionality urged was that
since many employers discharge garnished employees for being unreliable, the
law threatened the gainful employment of many wage earners. This contention the
Supreme Court of Wisconsin satisfactorily answered by saying that petitioner
had "made no showing that her own employer reacted in this manner."
Another ground challenging the state act was that it
affords 10 days' time to a plaintiff to serve the garnishee summons and
complaint on the defendant after service of the summons on the garnishee. This,
of course, she could not raise. The Wisconsin Supreme Court's answer to this
was that petitioner was served on the same day as the garnishee. [395 U.S. 337, 348]
The state court then pointed out that the
garnishment proceedings did not involve "any final determination of the
title to a defendant's property, but merely preserve[d] the status quo thereof
pending determination of the principal action." 37 Wis. 2d, at 169, 154 N.
W. 2d, at 262. The court then relied on McInnes v. McKay, 127 Me. 110, 141 A.
699. That suit related to a Maine attachment law which, of course, is governed
by the same rule as garnishment law. See "garnishment," Bouvier's Law
Dictionary; see also Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 .
The Maine law was subjected to practically the same challenges that Brother
HARLAN and the Court raise against this Wisconsin law. About that law the
Supreme Court of Maine said:
"But, although an
attachment may, within the broad meaning of the preceding definition, deprive
one of property, yet conditional and temporary as it is, and part of the legal
remedy and procedure by which the property of a debtor may be taken in
satisfaction of the debt, if judgment be recovered, we do not think it is the
deprivation of property contemplated by the Constitution. And if it be, it is
not a deprivation without `due process of law' for it is a part of a process,
which during its proceeding gives notice and opportunity for hearing and
judgment of some judicial or other authorized tribunal. The requirements of
`due process of law' and `law of the land' are satisfied." 127 Me. 110,
116, 141 A. 699, 702-703.
This Court did not even consider the challenge to
the Maine law worthy of a Court opinion but affirmed it in a per curiam
opinion, 279
U.S. 820 , on the authority of two prior decisions of this Court. See also
Standard Oil Co. v. Superior Court of New Castle County, 44 Del. [395 U.S. 337, 349] 538, 62 A. 2d 454, appeal
dismissed, 336
U.S. 930 ; Harris v. Balk, 198 U.S. 215,
222 , 227-228.
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in upholding the
constitutionality of its law also cited the following statement of our Court
made in Rothschild v. Knight, 184 U.S. 334,
341 :
"To what actions the
remedy of attachment may be given is for the legislature of a State to
determine and its courts to decide . . . ."
Accord, Huron Holding Corp. v. Lincoln Mine
Operating Co., 312
U.S. 183, 193 .
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin properly pointed out:
"The ability to place a
lien upon a man's property, such as to temporarily deprive him of its
beneficial use, without any judicial determination of probable cause dates back
not only to medieval England but also to Roman times." 37 Wis. 2d, at 171,
154 N. W. 2d, at 264.
The State Supreme Court then went on to point out a
statement made by Mr. Justice Holmes in Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U.S. 22, 31
:
"The Fourteenth
Amendment, itself a historical product, did not destroy history for the States
and substitute mechanical compartments of law all exactly alike. If a thing has
been practiced for two hundred years by common consent, it will need a strong
case for the Fourteenth Amendment to affect it, as is well illustrated by
Ownbey v. Morgan, 256
U.S. 94, 104 , 112."
The Ownbey case, which was one of the two cited by
this Court in its per curiam affirmance of McInnes v. McKay, supra, sustained
the constitutionality of a Delaware attachment law. And see Byrd v. Rector, 112
W. Va. 192, 163 S. E. 845. [395 U.S. 337, 350]
I can only conclude that the Court is today
overruling a number of its own decisions and abandoning the legal customs and
practices in this country with reference to attachments and garnishments wholly
on the ground that the garnishment laws of this kind are based on unwise
policies of government which might some time in the future do injury to some
individuals. In the first sentence of the argument in her brief, petitioner
urges that this Wisconsin law "is contrary to public policy"; the
Court apparently finds that a sufficient basis for holding it unconstitutional.
This holding savors too much of the "Natural Law," "Due
Process," "Shock-the-conscience" test of what is constitutional
for me to agree to the decision. See my dissent in Adamson v. California, 332
U.S. 46, 68 .
ADDENDUM.
The latest statement by my Brother HARLAN on the
power of this Court under the Due Process Clause to hold laws unconstitutional
on the ground of the Justices' view of "fundamental fairness" makes
it necessary for me to add a few words in order that the differences between us
be made absolutely clear. He now says that the Court's idea of
"fundamental fairness" is derived "not alone . . . from the
specifics of the Constitution, but also . . . from concepts which are part of the
Anglo-American legal heritage." This view is consistent with that
expressed by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in Rochin v. California that due process
was to be determined by "those canons of decency and fairness which
express the notions of justice of English-speaking peoples. . . ." 342
U.S. 165, 169 . In any event, my Brother HARLAN's "Anglo-American
legal heritage" is no more definite than the "notions of justice of
English-speaking peoples" or the shock-the-conscience test. All of these
so-called tests represent nothing more or less than an implicit adoption [395 U.S. 337, 351] of a Natural Law concept which
under our system leaves to judges alone the power to decide what the Natural
Law means. These so-called standards do not bind judges within any boundaries
that can be precisely marked or defined by words for holding laws
unconstitutional. On the contrary, these tests leave them wholly free to decide
what they are convinced is right and fair. If the judges, in deciding whether
laws are constitutional, are to be left only to the admonitions of their own
consciences, why was it that the Founders gave us a written Constitution at
all? [395 U.S. 337, 352]